Haddie Djemal most recently worked for Dr. Phil's Merit Street Media "Morning on Merit Street" with another Houstonian, Dominique Sachse.
After Merit Street started cutting staff, Djemal was looking for a new job and started an initiative on LinkedIn called #HireAJournalist. It's a movement that helps journalists use their skills to transition to a new line of work.
Djemal wrote the following for mikemcguff.com to share what is happening and to helpfully help journalists with potential career transitions:
"After the Merit Street layoffs, I did what most of us did—applied everywhere. Rejections kept rolling in, and at the same time, there was this huge debate on LinkedIn about the Open to Work banner.
A woman who had been job searching for months posted a pink banner that said “DESPERATE,” and it blew up. Some people thought it was too much, others—including me—completely understood where she was coming from. The job market was brutal. But for journalists? Even worse.
That post hit me because I realized—I wasn’t desperate. I had skills businesses actually needed, they just didn’t realize it yet. I thought about all these companies struggling with brand storytelling, credibility, media strategy—problems journalists solve every day—yet we were being overlooked because people don’t understand what we actually do. So I decided I was going to start this initiative, hoping maybe a few journalists would appreciate the banner and see that someone was fighting for them.
I started posting every single day about the value of journalists in business, how our skills translate into revenue, brand trust, and impact, and why hiring a journalist isn’t a favor—it’s a business advantage. At first, it was just an initiative, but then it started gaining traction. And then, it became something much bigger.
The LinkedIn group has grown to over 500 members—journalists, former journalists, industry leaders, even professionals outside media who support the cause. The hashtag is spreading, and people are using hashtag #HireAJournalist on their own. My posts have hit over 500,000 impressions, and journalists from Nigeria, Japan, the UK, Russia, and beyond have reached out saying this initiative is needed and that they’re so glad someone is doing this. My following has doubled in a month, and I’ll hit 10K by March.
This isn’t just a job search anymore—it’s become a movement to rebrand journalism for the modern workforce. In an already tough job market, businesses are overlooking one of the most valuable assets they could hire. Every industry is looking for media experts who know how to shape narratives, data storytellers who can turn information into impact, and credibility builders in a time when trust is everything. The problem isn’t that journalists don’t have transferable skills. The problem is that companies don’t realize they need us.
That’s the gap I’m working to bridge. hashtag #HireAJournalist is about shifting the conversation, creating opportunities, and proving that businesses need journalists now more than ever. Would love to dive into this in an interview—especially since this is a global shift happening in real-time. Let me know what you think!"
